Why the "You need more health" paradigm is bad

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mucker wrote:

It might be different when lockstep is in the full game, maybe we'll see the trend you're looking for.

+1

I want to try the Lockstep ASAP!

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goetzjam wrote:

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Wispo wrote:

Not having phoenix shield is asking to die. Is this variety? No, because OR "you" put togheter shield + flask + purity OR you die. The real variety would be to survive even without those equip/skills, and even with 20% res (just a number for saying), because you have invested in some other aspect as much reliable as life + defences.

And it's not a valid point to list one by one the defences present in this game, because all of them are shit, cause yuo need more that one of them at the same thime to have a viable protection (phoenix + purity... coil + hate.... eva + block). This means that we don't have a SINGLE and at the same time VALID defence, and this is the reason (stated by you now) because one player MUST take a good life or ES pool as a base of his/her defenceS

In a game in wich, in a white crematorium map, a lvl 81 exile with over 11k es + 1.3k+ regen/sec (ZO) + 75% res risk to die if stay 2 secs under a crit firestorm... well the defences are simply DISGUSTING

You don't need pof+rof+flask in order to not die to firestrom in a 76 map. You need one of them in order to play "safe" if you can't adjust for specific boss encounters then you might as well avoid them completely they are mechanics you must learn to play with or around.

Yes all defensive options are shit, that is why the following has been nerfed the past year:

block
spell block
acro
mom (thru cloak)
lightning coil
max res

Sure I am missing more.

You are completely oblivious to the mechanics of this game, your highest level character is 82 and you aren't even using life, how in the world can you base your arguments here on life based character defenses when you aren't using it yourself?

The max res should not be increased and armor is reworked in beta. The only adjustment that needs to be made to damage is it be less spiky in areas where you don't expect it (aka outside of boss encounters)

If you learn and plan for the boss encounters in the game (piety, dominus, atziri, ect) then you shouldn't die.

You still continue to going on with your elitist vision (=if a player has no lvl 4986948737 exile, he/she cannot talk in a right manner). Never thinked that i could have deleted other toons life based, many of them near lvl 80 too? ;)
I am bringing valid arguments like "path of life nodes" (a REAL fact) and the future ">>>MORE<<< PATH OF LIFE NODES" cause the patch will increase monster damage, but all you do is parrotly listing all the crap defences in the game (and all of them, even togheter, are NOTHING without an AMPLE life/es pool at the base, so it's PATH OF LIFE NODES) desperatedly trying to making this game seem good thinked and good designed.
But you are free to continue to defend the UNdefendable

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I think that part of this is a bad vision of what should be expected from a character due to the way the passive skill tree works compared to previous ARPGs.


In Diablo II (damn, I never thought I would be the one to bring a "Diablo II did this well" argument to a discussion), you had 4 stats to choose from, and were expected to put some points in all of them, except if your build could specifically skip one (like dex for casters).
Now, you have a vast net of bonuses, and tend to believe that almost nothing is mandatory, where in fact it is mandatory to take X and Y kinds of advantages. The issue that there may be isn't that one has to take some life in order to survive, it is that one has to take all available life in order to survive (even my RF build can die extremely quickly despite having massive amounts of life).

I died yesterday in a lvl 71 zana daily with "area contains many totems" mod cause i opened a strongbox with "guarded by a stream of monsters" and "guarded by 234669376329849 packs of magic monsters".
Guess what? ONESHOTTED. With 11.5k ES...

A large and empty (=no obstacles, so guess how many billions mobs there where...) room filled by ALL BLUES (not a single white...), ALL with nasty mods for the mob's type (rohas was DEADLY, archers was SPLITTING and so on), ALL empowered by 97 miles radius totems of "deal substantial physical damage", "empowers allies" (=power charges) and "deal extra cold damage". In one word, mega physical damage (blue mobs) + added physical (totem) + criticals (empower) + cold (extra ice).

Now tell me if seems you right that even a reduced duration warp cannot finish its (very short) animation that an exile with over double the life pool of a normal one must rip (obviously, warp procced BEFORE the opening).

Now, i expect someone to come and tell me to use taste of hate -.-

@nhemin

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Where do you all think GGG's money comes from? Old players have paid their buck, they might by 1 or 2 cool things every few months, but they got their stash tabs and skins...now what?

It comes from players that buy supporter packs and stash tabs, I'll tell you what find me a new player (less then 6 months that have spent over $500 on supporter packs or more) You will notice most of the players with multiple forum titles in this game are multiple supporter pack buyers, it doesn't matter if we can buy every single MTX in the game, we still support the company and buy the packs. So for the love of everything don't use an arguement that PoE new players support the game, especially financially.

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Devs and people on the forums gotta look at the broader picture. How much satisfaction has this game brought players? Especially as they near merciless mode and end game.

Bigger picture is always important, I can tell you personally that much of the changes in beta and act 4 improve the endgame ability to progress from cruel to merciless.

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I had to take a big break from the game because I was tired of the lack of hybrid builds. Sure you CAN make a hybrid build, but it sucks compared to full life or full ES and both of those require near perfect gear to be 'viable'.

I hate when people use the word viable, especially without context. Much improvements have been made to hybrid builds, however personally I don't see the desire for such build.

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To be able to do any of the cool content which is late game maps, unique maps, atziri, etc. You have to have very specific builds with certain pieces of gear. Which rules out almost all of the "player choice" in the matter.

That is such bullshit and you can't sit here and tell me otherwise. Atziri has been killed with characters with 4 link as main DPS source. Bow characters, spell casters, melee, almost every time of build you can imagine can kill atziri, some easier then others, but to say you need specific pieces of gear to kill atziri is complete crap.

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For instance one of the worst things you can do at the start of any season is make a melee character. Your item rarity will be poop and you will have a hard time once you hit merciless for the first time. So most older players go caster, farm up a tonne of items and then make their GG end-game meta builds.

While this is somewhat true it isn't completely the end all be all, especially in beta (with act 4 changes) IR has nothing to do with being melee or ranged it has to do with what are you willing to sacrifice in order to get it. Many people I know don't care if they play with more then 20iir, every bit helps, but if you clear faster you CAN make up for the fact that less unqiues will drop. Many improvements have been made to melee to make them desireable to play from level 1, day 1, spell casters have been nerfed, the endgame defenses have been nerfed, while in most cases the spell damage or crit has been buffed. Melee will be desirable at the start of new leagues and spell casters will have issues surviving without great gear.

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The new players have it right, this game is a little elitist with not many options available (we'll see what changes in the next expansion).

I've seen first hand many of the changes in the expansion and when I speak of the game as a whole I do include those changes, right now it might seem things are off or different then what I've said, but if you were in the beta to test these changes you would be able to speak of them as well. If you think PoE is elitist go play D2 and come back and tell me how hard the transition was from Nightmare to Hell, PoE's Cruel > merciless doesn't have anything on that.

If you seen I made a post regarding that new player feedback further down the line, typically when I post I go into more detail then that, which of course looks very dismissive. I appreciate feedback from new players as much as the next guy, but I don't want the game to be turned worst because you want it easier or don't know of changes happening in act 4.


@ Wispo

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You still continue to going on with your elitist vision (=if a player has no lvl 4986948737 exile, he/she cannot talk in a right manner). Never thinked that i could have deleted other toons life based, many of them near lvl 80 too? ;)
I am bringing valid arguments like "path of life nodes" (a REAL fact) and the future ">>>MORE<<< PATH OF LIFE NODES" cause the patch will increase monster damage, but all you do is parrotly listing all the crap defences in the game (and all of them, even togheter, are NOTHING without an AMPLE life/es pool at the base, so it's PATH OF LIFE NODES) desperatedly trying to making this game seem good thinked and good designed.
But you are free to continue to defend the UNdefendable

What the hell are you talking about now?

Near level 80 grats, you can reach that without ever doing maps! You are bringing something that YOU think is valid and completely ignoring every single OTHER defensive mechanic that is in the game aside from life.

Yes you can run around with no life on gear, no es on gear and stack every other form of defense and expect not to die, point me to a single game that doesn't have you invest into a life or a life like defense in order to live?

You can't.

Even D3 forces you to get multiple forms of defenses in order to live, instead of having capped res % like PoE it just has resistances you can get very high with specific pieces of gear\characters, sound familiar you you?

They have vitality, sounds like life to me?

They don't have any ES like mechanic at all, every single player's defenses in that game are life + something else. In PoE it is life OR ES + other forms of defenses.

I mentioned life has strength and ES has int to improve those stats (slightly), I wouldn't mind seeing another defensive life\es like mechanic based on dex, currently its evasion, but that doesn't help vs spell damage and doesn't behave like life\es does currently.

No matter what type of ARPG you play theres always a life or life like mechanic with ways to increase it, I don't understand how you don't get this, until you do I cannot discuss anything related to this with you.

@mrtremere

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The issue that there may be isn't that one has to take some life in order to survive, it is that one has to take all available life in order to survive (even my RF build can die extremely quickly despite having massive amounts of life).

Please go into detail of your RF build, if I viewed it correctly that character is level 68, which means you have quite a lot of passive tree points left before your character is complete and plenty of improvements that can be made to gear choices.

With an RF build specifically life=damage so by stacking % life on the tree and gear you also increase your damage, typically this isn't something most builds need, but if your character is level 68 and trying to do zones higher or bosses significantly higher then your level, naturally any build should suffer from being "underleveled"

I believe some of the improvements made in Act 4 will address the issue of life moreso, but also past improvements of reducing the % of life available on the tree and increasing the life gained per level made for a more balanced gameplay experience, especially if you didn't have life on gear (like many unqiues) or significantly high life like 70+ on each piece.

As far as D2 goes, you are vastly mistaken. Most builds only put stats into what they HAD TO HAVE, everything else was added into life, or if caster and going ES that. PoE allows you to get much less investment in life then D2 ever did.

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Wispo wrote:

I died yesterday in a lvl 71 zana daily with "area contains many totems" mod cause i opened a strongbox with "guarded by a stream of monsters" and "guarded by 234669376329849 packs of magic monsters".
Guess what? ONESHOTTED. With 11.5k ES...

A large and empty (=no obstacles, so guess how many billions mobs there where...) room filled by ALL BLUES (not a single white...), ALL with nasty mods for the mob's type (rohas was DEADLY, archers was SPLITTING and so on), ALL empowered by 97 miles radius totems of "deal substantial physical damage", "empowers allies" (=power charges) and "deal extra cold damage". In one word, mega physical damage (blue mobs) + added physical (totem) + criticals (empower) + cold (extra ice).

Now tell me if seems you right that even a reduced duration warp cannot finish its (very short) animation that an exile with over double the life pool of a normal one must rip (obviously, warp procced BEFORE the opening).

Now, i expect someone to come and tell me to use taste of hate -.-

Don't need to tell you to use taste of hate. So what exactly were the mods on the box, because it seems like it was a rare box with at least:

stream of monsters
exile
magic monsters

And you yolo clicked it and expected to live? No amount of ES or life can save yourself from an encounter to which you cannot possible complete, did you lag, desync or otherwise have connection issues?

Your 11k ES character has no other form of defense being used, yet you sit here and bash me to telling you that you MUST stack other forms of defenses rather then raw life (or ES) in order to live, your story just proves you are oblivious to mechanics of the game that are available to you.

There is no reason at all you shouldn't be using CWDT\EC\IC\ID on live, no reason what so ever. If you cant roll the colors for 4 red, then at least use CWDT\EC\IC and enfeeble or another curse. In beta you will need to manually cast enduring cry, but that change isn't in the game, if you had that setup you wouldn't of died to a strongbox like you described.

You are bashing life builds when you aren't even playing one.

Life builds can use flask, especially ones like instant recovery in order to not get destroyed, but nope you don't have that option as an ES character, YOU MUST NOT PLAY UP CLOSE IF YOU DONT HAVE THE OTHER DEFENSES TO SUPPORT IT.

You have no armor, no evasion and no way of dealing with physical damage mitigation you refuse to acknowledge the fact I've repeatedly have said you can't just stack life\es in order to live, its called layering and you 100% refuse to do it, it doesn't surprise me at all your character isn't above level 82.

Life based characters are MUCH more forgiving then ES characters, yet for some reason you also are ignoring that fact, by all means continue to play the way you want, but if you want to progress there are better ways to make a character, if you want help I can or anyone will if you ask.

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Wispo wrote:

1) reduce that damn monster damage, way too stupidly high (let's think to magnus that one shots 5k life exiles with 4 charges out of 10 of flameblast, or expecially white mobs phisically hitting for over 2k damage like evangelists and retches with their claws and chimerals) and let defences stay the way they are now

I like to play HC in games where it is possible. Lets talk about 3 deaths I have had recently in 1mHC

Most recent. lvl 78 in a 69 map. 5k EH. Died to invisible Magnus Flameblast. Magnus was not visible as well. Max resists etc. didn't matter. Poof!

Previous. lvl 78 in a 67 crypt. Beyond boss spawns, laggy/desync or whatever. Regain control at the rip screen. Poof!

Cruel Docks. Overleveled, but not sure by how much. Desync about 2 and a half screens away into a corner of a landing I never visited in my client. Already surrounded by mobs and dead. Poof!

I want the game to kill me fair and square. I take all the life nodes I can, foregoing damage in pursuit of safety. I haven't made many friends in this game, and the trade system is really terrible so 99% self-found. I farm zones till I way overlevel them. Slow and safe, not efficient at all. I spend loads of currency rolling flasks with just the right affixes.

I want the game to kill me fair and square.

Dying to bugs and bullshit internet issues makes me want to just stop playing.

Dying to real mechanics because I screwed up makes me want to play more.

Dying because I screwed up by just playing the game in the first place....


C'mon GGG, make me feel like I am making real choices in my builds, and when I die make me feel like I was overpowered by badass monsters by being reckless. Give me the power fantasy of creating a crazy badass character who wrecks the little baby monsters with a whisper and cowers in fear of the big zone bosses.

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Most recent. lvl 78 in a 69 map. 5k EH. Died to invisible Magnus Flameblast. Magnus was not visible as well. Max resists etc. didn't matter. Poof!

His flameblast is scary, I will admit that, this sounds to me more of an issue with desync or connection then with the fight with him. If you could see him and the flameblast would you have stood in it or moved out of it? It is very well known you cannot tank his flameblast without +max fire res, this goes back into the whole layering of defenses you can't rely on 1 mechanic in order to survive. I'll admit this death is among the worst currently, but it shouldn't be around after Act 4 hits.

Also what were the mods at the time of this death? You have to keep in mind the 1month league has rotating mods that make it much more difficult then the regular "game"

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Previous. lvl 78 in a 67 crypt. Beyond boss spawns, laggy/desync or whatever. Regain control at the rip screen. Poof!

That issue is gone in beta. With lockstep you would not desync or die to that without being able to see exactly where your character is.

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Cruel Docks. Overleveled, but not sure by how much. Desync about 2 and a half screens away into a corner of a landing I never visited in my client. Already surrounded by mobs and dead. Poof!

Again, this is fixed in beta.

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I want the game to kill me fair and square. I take all the life nodes I can, foregoing damage in pursuit of safety. I haven't made many friends in this game, and the trade system is really terrible so 99% self-found. I farm zones till I way overlevel them. Slow and safe, not efficient at all. I spend loads of currency rolling flasks with just the right affixes.

The trade system is fine, if you need help there are places to find information about how to buy\sell\ect. If you are looking for an AH I can tell you GGG will never do it, that is not trading that simply is a replacement system and one PoE doesn't need.

I think everyone spends time rolling flask, its crucial in order to be able to progress, you can if you want pay a premium and purchase prerolled flask, but its part of the game.

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I want the game to kill me fair and square.

It does a much better job at this in beta.

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Dying to bugs and bullshit internet issues makes me want to just stop playing.

Then stop playing and come back when Act 4 releases around the start of July, with it comes a new method of connecting to the server and the removal of desync. Paired with a buff for melee builds, re-balance of the tree and new unqiues\jewel system. I rather you play the game I've played on beta vs being frustrated for another month and giving up, when Act 4 comes out you will enjoy the game much more then now.

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Dying to real mechanics because I screwed up makes me want to play more.

Trust me plenty of those are around in Act 4 :P

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C'mon GGG, make me feel like I am making real choices in my builds, and when I die make me feel like I was overpowered by badass monsters by being reckless. Give me the power fantasy of creating a crazy badass character who wrecks the little baby monsters with a whisper and cowers in fear of the big zone bosses.

You can do that now, but if you think you can't wait until Act 4 :D

I have beta access. Ripped my last char on it to weird lockstep issues where I couldn't even log out. Dying at 80% hp, nice game. Should have screenshotted it to be honest. Unless the new servers change the lockstep weirdness I'll probably be stuck with predictive anyway, so don't pretend that the desync issues are fixed for everyone.

Trying beta again since I am sick of the beyond mod in 1mhc and the league is pretty much dead anyway. Getting to top 1k 3x and top 500 1x is enough for me.


If I had seen Magnus or his flameblast I would have ran away or logged out. Invisible one shot bullshit is the substitute for actual difficulty mechanics in this game it seems.

Honestly, I am pretty new to this game all things considered. Coupla-few months and man the shine is really dulling quickly. First many deaths were legit and I was excited to find a game in this genre which aligned with my interests as an older HC gamer. Lately has just felt like a slog through lazily designed and poorly thought out mechanics while standing in the middle of a fanboy circle-jerk.

This game has so much potential and does many things well, but in the areas it falls flat it does so right on its face.

Trade= 3rd party website/apps. GGG has invented a time machine to bring one of the worst mechanics of d2 15 years into the future. They still balance around trading though...

No offline mode= Honestly I understand this one, but designing your game for an offline environment and slamming it into the unstable world of always online causes so many issues, even with lockstep.

End-Game= Maps and Path of 3rd Party Trading. Works great for those who have been playing as these trade systems came into use in this game. Not so much for the newer player.

Difficulty mechanics= Oneshots. RNG or lag lines up and poof! Prior game knowledge and preparation helps minimally. Power fantasy denied. Die to little baby monsters, sleep through bosses.


I've only put 40 bucks in and already I'm feeling a duped by Path of Life nodes which don't even give long term safety. I can't imagine what it must be like for those who've spent thousands. The amount of sunk-cost rationalization must be huge.

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I have beta access. Ripped my last char on it to weird lockstep issues where I couldn't even log out. Dying at 80% hp, nice game. Should have screenshotted it to be honest. Unless the new servers change the lockstep weirdness I'll probably be stuck with predictive anyway, so don't pretend that the desync issues are fixed for everyone.

I wish you would have reported the issue, they can't fix an issue with lockstep unless they know it exsits in the first place. It is also worth mentioning that predictive mode has lots of improvements on beta that isn't on live.

Lockstep takes a while to get used to in general about an hour per 20 ms or so. So at 60 ms it takes about 3 hours to get used to it after playing with the predictive mode, overall this depends on your latency but either way is very playable for me.

Desync issues are fixed for everyone, if you don't have the ability to use lockstep or for some reason cannot use it, how is that GGG's fault? They have multiple gateway servers all over the place to connect to, I've yet to connect to one to get my ping time higher and see the experience, but the whole desync isn't fixed for everyone comment is pure bullshit in my book, it is with Act 4.

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Trying beta again since I am sick of the beyond mod in 1mhc and the league is pretty much dead anyway. Getting to top 1k 3x and top 500 1x is enough for me.

Beyond is annoying, but also can be very rewarding, there is a reason why its one of the most pupular zana map mods and that mainly has to do with loot\map sustainability.

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If I had seen Magnus or his flameblast I would have ran away or logged out. Invisible one shot bullshit is the substitute for actual difficulty mechanics in this game it seems.

Invisible is a mistake, one I wish you would have captured, especially if something like it happened in beta.

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Honestly, I am pretty new to this game all things considered. Coupla-few months and man the shine is really dulling quickly. First many deaths were legit and I was excited to find a game in this genre which aligned with my interests as an older HC gamer. Lately has just felt like a slog through lazily designed and poorly thought out mechanics while standing in the middle of a fanboy circle-jerk.

You are welcome to try and find a better ARPG, problem is you won't unless you want to play some modded version of D2, PoE is the best ARPG around. Grim dawn is an interesting one, but its taken too long to progress and lacks lots of the interesting mechanics that PoE has.

What exactly is a poorly thought out mechanic, in your eyes, i've yet to hear you give feedback on it other then obvious things that should be corrected (like invisible this or that)

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This game has so much potential and does many things well, but in the areas it falls flat it does so right on its face.

More information PLEASE.

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Trade= 3rd party website/apps. GGG has invented a time machine to bring one of the worst mechanics of d2 15 years into the future. They still balance around trading though...

What exactly do you want GGG to implement those tools into the site? That takes time and money and honestly the system is fine, it uses the official forums to facilitate everything, some improvements can be made but to say it sucks or is unusuable simply isn't true.

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No offline mode= Honestly I understand this one, but designing your game for an offline environment and slamming it into the unstable world of always online causes so many issues, even with lockstep.

I disagree, if you have feedback on lockstep, including but not limited to gateway used, average ping time, ect I would like to hear it. Not even D3 has offline mode, its essentially the future of almost every game. As an oldschool gamer I can understand why you don't like it, but at the same time its business model relies completely on being an online game.

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I've only put 40 bucks in and already I'm feeling a duped by Path of Life nodes which don't even give long term safety. I can't imagine what it must be like for those who've spent thousands. The amount of sunk-cost rationalization must be huge.

Layered defenses are necessary in this game, you build for the challenge you expect, not just stack life or ES and are done. I've spent over a thousand personally and debating on the amount to spend for the next supporter packs, the game is well worth rewarding the developers for making, especially after the changes in beta.


There was a period in time where I had similar feelings that most new players have, at some point you learn the mechanics, skills, ect and it just makes since, until that point you will struggle, PoE can focus a lot on making the game easier for new players to learn, currently its ask for help, watch a streamer, or try google\wiki.